Sleeping With Ghosts
by BizarreSerenity
Summary: After grafting part of his master's flesh to his own body, Kabuto finds that he is not exactly...well. Rated M for language and implications. Can be read as OroKabu.


**I really enjoy these characters.**

**Kabuto is really a complex, amazing man. He's devout to Orochimaru, but he struggles to make both his goals and his Master's a priority. He laid his life down multiple times for this blood thirsty man who wanted nothing but power and immortality. But he is a strong man, with an almost unbreakable will.**

**And then there's Orochimaru.**

**He's just strange. His mind is like a dark maze, a very complicated labyrinth. His emotions change so rapidly, and he's just devious. He does anything he can to get what he wants. And oh, Orochimaru always gets what he wants.**

**Anyway, here's another transformation and angsty fic between my two favorite characters.**

**Enjoy.**

**-BizarreSerenity  
**

After he grafted the flesh and eye from his deceased master onto his own body, Kabuto was reluctant to leave the Lair.

They had moved from lair to lair, and Kabuto had not known the difference from one and the other, save that some of the dungeons and laboratories were bigger in some places, experiments stored in one or another. The stone halls were the same, cold and drafty, the passages that were less used dusty and filled with stale air. Candle holders set into the stone walls held cold, tallow candles that were lit often, but not often enough.

But this was the Lair that Orochimaru had first brought Kabuto to when he was just a boy, barely released from Sasori and given to the Snake Lord, who brought him up and gave him gifts of power in exchange for his service.

He wandered the dark, dusty halls, footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous hideout. Kabuto found that he didn't need to light the candles bolted into the walls; he could see well in the dark now, almost as well as he could in the light. His fingers brushed against the cold stone wall as he walked, stirring up dust that danced in whorls of grey powder.

All the other ninja had vacated the place shortly after Sasuke left, covered in his sensei's blood, his face bland as if he cared not for anything in the world.

Kabuto was all alone, with only the patchy white scales on his arm for comfort.

He wandered for hours, in no fixed pattern, climbing stairs, descending them, walking through hallways and into rooms. His thoughts stirred listlessly in his mind, his head light and dizzy from the medical jutsu he had preformed only hours before.

He did not know what he would do; for years, Kabuto had followed not his own dreams, but his master's. He had accompanied Orochimaru in his search for immortality for so long that he could not remember his own dreams.

All he knew was to serve.

And Sasuke had taken his master from him, ripped him from his grasp and crushed him when Orochimaru was at his absolute weakest.

"Coward."

Kabuto's voice was a low and dangerous rasp, and he found himself filled with fire and hate. He stopped in the middle of the corridor, and drew his fist back.

He slammed it into a wall, and the very earth trembled with the power of the blow, rumbling beneath his feet. It pitched and rolled, and Kabuto caught his balance on the remaining crater of what had been the cobbled wall, panting.

Anger bled out of him quickly, released by the intentional act of self harm. He rubbed his fractured and bleeding knuckles, healing them without even a whisper of a thought, and continued down the hallway.

It took him a few minutes to notice the familiarity of the hallways, the more polished and refined stone, the carved doors.

He had unknowingly wandered into Orochimaru's wing of the hideout, and down the hall, straight ahead, lay his room.

Kabuto could make out the two cobras carved into the large door, twined together with their hoods up and their fangs bared in a deadly display of threat. Rubies were inlaid as eyes for the snakes, and they shone dully in the dark, a light speckling of dust laying upon them.

Weary, Kabuto stood in front of the door, his shoulders slumped. His back was sore, his arm, chest, and eye were burning from the grafting and transplanting of Orochimaru's flesh, and he felt drained. Cold. Incomplete.

He let himself into the room, for what reasons, he could never fathom. His room was only down the hall, near the labs. Yet he had come here, unconsciously sought this bedroom.

He closed the door heavily behind him and leaned against it, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the pitch blackness of the bedroom.

His chest and throat tightened almost painfully when he saw the bed, the magnificent, great bed sheeted in purple silk that Orochimaru had lain in while he waited for Sasuke to be delivered by The Sound Four.

It was the bed that Kabuto had slept by for weeks, afraid that his master's body would give out on him before his new host arrived.

It seemed forever ago, forever since Kabuto had stood in this very room on his knees, and begged Orochimaru to take his body as his own before his master's soul was lost forever.

"Are you so eager to die for me, Kabuto?"

He said the words aloud, but they didn't sound right past his lips. They lacked the huskiness of that voice, the power, the darkness of it.

That moment felt like ages ago to Kabuto, eons and eons away.

Dust swam into the air as Kabuto curled up beside the great bed, leaning against the frame as he tucked his head onto one shoulder.

He closed his eyes, and slept.

Rustling, then silence.

Something cool brushed across his cheek, and he blearily rubbed at it, tucking his head into the crook of his arm again.

He was drifting in the space between asleep and awake, exhaustion still coiled within his body and willing him to sleep.

He heard the rustling sound again, but as if it were far away this time.

A warm, feathery feeling crept onto his skin, spreading though out his body from his head to his toes, replacing the icy feeling that had been clinging to his skin since the grafting with a warm prickly sensation, as if he were being touched.

Kabuto sighed, and rolled on his back, peeling open his eyes and rubbing at them.

He let his arms flop down, but instead of feeling cold stone, he felt something warm and soft.

He had somehow moved from sleeping on the floor, to sleeping in Orochimaru's bed.

He was curled up, head nestled onto one of the feather pillows, covered in the dust that had settled onto the fine silk sheets.

He gazed blearily around the room, trying to remember when he had grown tired of the floor and crept up on the bed, but found that he could not.

Kabuto felt out of place on the grand, silk sheeted bed, didn't deserve to lay where his master had once lain, dying, until he was convinced to take another body.

He stared glassily up at the ceiling, anger burning beneath his breastbone again. Just the thought of sharingan eyes made him want to howl, to kill, to tear that insolent boy who had slain Orochimaru to bits and pieces, then stitch him back up, and repeat the process all over again.

He dreamily recalled his favorite torture methods as his eyelids drooped, relished in the feeling of one of his favorite scalpels sharpened to razor perfection pressed against live skin, feeling the thrill of coming that much closer to his goal.

No, HIS goal.

Thoughts drifted away as Kabuto's eyes closed, sleep pulling him down once more, shadows flickering from corners as he fought to try and stay awake.

He could have sworn he saw a dark shape lean over him, but was too tired to think.

He slept once more.

"Kabuto..."

He was warm again, almost unbearably so, and woke up gasping for air.

He was so sure that he had heard a voice, so absolutely positive that the rustling sounds had come back in the form a painfully familiar voice.

Sweat ran down his back and shoulders in rivulets, plastering his long, dusty hair to his cheeks and neck. He scanned the room with attentive, careful eyes, searching hard through the dark.

He caught a flicker of movement against a wall, and in a movement so brief he did not see it coming, a candle was lit.

Ghostly, flicking candlelight made the shadows dance as Kabuto sat up quickly, hand finding a kunai tucked into his belt. Dust billowed up around him in eerie clouds as a dark shape seemed to linger in the doorway for a few seconds, chips of slitted amber outlined in violet glittering in the candlelight.

Kabuto's breath caught in his throat, and he choked, a feeble sound.

The shape moved fluidly, gracefully forward, darkness rippling like a banner behind it.

He caught the scent of sandalwood in the air, heard the swishing of silk and bare feet.

His heart hammered hard, pulse thundering in his wrists and ears, harder than the pound of the surf against the shore, almost brutal.

Kabuto could only look on in mute horror as the black shape became illuminated by the candlelight, the yellowish flame giving form to ink black hair, slitted amber eyes, and pale-as-snow skin.

"You look surprised to see me, Kabuto."

He was going to scream.

He was going to scream because this was not possible. This was not possible because he had SEEN his corpse, cut it, and grafted it onto his own body. He had smelt the blood, seen the carnage through Sasuke, felt the ripping sorrow in every fiber of his being.

And this was not possible.

It was not possible.

"You're not him." Kabuto said, his voice a dry, fearful whisper. "He took him away. He's dead and you aren't him!"

The thing that was not his master, that couldn't be, leaned forward. Locks of soft, dark hair brushed at Kabuto's arms as it leaned in, fiery amber snake eyes staring unblinkingly into his.

"That miserable excuse for an Uchiha boy didn't take me away, Kabuto. And as you can clearly see, i am not dead."

It peeled back the silken covers, and glared at him.

"Now move over."

Kabuto was rooted to the spot, in that sprawl back-first on the dusty, majestic bed, reeling from the sight before him.

"I saw you." He said again, his voice rising to a normal tone now. "I saw it happen, and then i cut into your body and i grafted your skin and your eye onto my own body."

It glared frostily at him, this thing that pretended to be his master. It had perfected every aspect about him: his regal bearing, his appearance, even the grace of his movements and his pattern of speech.

But Orochimaru was dead.

He was dead, and-

"Where?" It asked, reaching forward to take hold of what was left of Kabuto's shirt, and yank, quicker than a striking snake. The purple fabric ripped down, exposing the expanse of Kabuto's torso, which was covered in...

Unmarked skin?

"I see nothing, Kabuto." It hissed, as Kabuto found himself questioning his sanity. "Now move over, before i move you myself."

Kabuto scrambled back, completely and utterly lost with himself. He ran the tips of his fingers over the skin of his torso, pressing at the lines of muscle, searching for the patchy white scales that had been there hours ago, cold as ice.

But now there was nothing save for his own skin.

"I thought you were dead." Kabuto rasped, holding his head in his hands, fingers threading through locks of sweaty silver hair. "I swore i saw your corpse, grafted your flesh onto my body."

Warm hands drew him down to the bed, and he did not struggle.

Could everything, his death, the grafting of flesh, the whole thing be a dream?

Exhaustion was taking over again, and Kabuto's eyelids felt heavy, as if they were weighed down. Dusty, silken covers were drawn over him, and he could not help but close his eyes.

Fire was scalding his skin.

It was burning at his arms and his chest, across his face and eyes. He struggled, but arms like steel vises were clamped around him, and he heard ringing laughter in his ears as he forced his eyes open, clawing at the silk sheets beneath him.

Hands.

Scaled hands, hands covered in ivory white scales.

HIS hands.

He screamed, a long, raw sound that seemed to never end.

"I'm not dead, Kabuto." Orochimaru's voice whispered, in his ears and mind and body, as scales crawled up his arms and face. "I'll always be with you, inside, waiting."

He struggled, bit, clawed, but his master wouldn't let go.

Kabuto screamed again, the ragged sound drawn out into a questioning shriek of pain that echoed harshly in the dusty bedroom.

Orochimaru chuckled,the laughter gathered in Kabuto's own chest, and the words spilling past Kabuto's own lips:

"Because soul mates never die."


End file.
